SEO & Website Migration – Slides & Resources from #SMX West

by Dana Lookadoo on March 5, 2012

Yo! You ready to talk some SEO and website migration?

About 150 people attended the “SEO Essentials for Website Migration” panel at SMX West on March 1, 2012. It was a good turnout for the last day of a 3-day conference and a morning session. A large number of attendees where in-house SEOs, and manywere in the midst of a website migration to a CMS or had one upcoming.

A Website Relaunch Takes Planning

I opened my presentation by asking the audience to close their eyes and proceeded to tell a true story experienced by “netmeg” a month earlier:

Imagine you’re going into a client meeting and found out they are migrating to a new CMS and will be changing ALL of the URLs…in 3 WEEKS!

They have 2/3s of the site built in Drupal but didn’t think to talk to you, their SEO firm, about it first. There is no content developed, and the Drupal site is broken. The site must stay on the same domain, but a different server… until they get around the broken issues. PLUS! It’s important there is NO SERP loss. It’s a 15-year-old domain with lots of juice and has to be done right.

SEOmoz – Web Site Migration Guide: Tips for SEOs
This post was not part of my presentation, and I refused to read it prior to avoid adding anything extra that would entice me to go over 12 minutes. It’s huge, a big guide full of tips, tools, and considerations for migrating a website.

Redirects Worksheet – FREE Download by Yo! Yo! SEO

I provided a download of a Redirects Worksheet Template you can use to track your 301s. It can also be used to help with your link-reclamation efforts.

Tools – FREE versions

Get your groove on with webmaster tools before and especially AFTER launch. Keep an eye on those 404 errors, crawl stats, and more. Heck, you can even submit an XML sitemap or two.

Search-Engine Friendly CMSs

Someone asked about content management systems during Q&A. What’s SEO-friendly? I recommended Pixelsilk CMS. You have nearly full control over your URL structure, which means you could avoid changing URLs if your current site is already optimized.